Tag Archives: partner migration

Now I’ve talked a little about how P and I met and why we decided to take the plunge and apply for a Partner visa, I thought it might be useful for all the prospective applicants out there if I told you about what we actually included in our application. We made the decision to do this in January 2012, roughly six weeks after we moved in together. However, we were only able to submit our application nearly a year after this, as in order to be eligible for the visa, we needed to have been in a de facto relationship for the entire 12 months immediately prior to lodging our application. Periods of dating don’t count towards this “one-year relationship requirement” so it didn’t matter that we had been together over a year before moving in together.

De facto relationship: Both parties have a mutual commitment to a shared life to the exclusion of all others, their relationship is genuine and continuing. They live together, or do not live separately or apart on a permanent basis.

Keep this definition in mind when you are putting your application together. This is what your application form and all the supporting evidence you include is trying to demonstrate.

So my first post! I have to admit I’ve never been much of a diary writer, though I’ve tried to be numerous times! Let’s hope I’m a better blogger, though judging by the gap between creating my “about” page and writing this first post I’m not that hopeful!!

If you’ve read my ‘about’ page you’ll already know that I met my partner of over two years in a Japanese evening class in October 2010 held here in Oxford where we’re currently living. We had known each other for about a month as friends before we started dating. Originally, the plan was to meet up and practice our Japanese together as his was (and probably still is) more advanced than mine. However the Japanese lessons were kind of abandoned early on as things took a different path 🙂 From the moment we got together, P was pretty adamant that he aimed to travel back to Australia in November 2011, in time to celebrate his younger sister’s 18th birthday that December. As sad as it was to be beginning a relationship that apparently already had an “expiration date” we continued regardless. We had a lot in common, similar interests and tastes in a lot of things and I was determined to make the most of what time we had, whatever happened at the end of that next year.